Seventeen months ago, the British media decided, en masse, to cherry-pick poorly translated excerpts from Prince Harry’s memoir and scream hysterically about how Harry was “bragging” about his kill number when he served in the British Army. The Mail and other outlets were literally quoting the Taliban just to bash Harry and slander his military service. It was one of the most deplorable things I’ve ever seen from the British media and from the royal machinery. What’s even crazier is that… none of it stuck. All of that screaming, hysteria, slander and Taliban-outrage, and Harry diffused the issue simply by saying he revealed his number to prevent veteran suicide and that people should read Spare in context (which they did). Well, I bring this up because now Harry’s military service is something to be praised, especially when it’s the right-wing media trying to attach Harry to Rishi Sunak’s plan to bring back national service. From Roya Nikkhah at the Times of London:

Has the prime minister been flicking through the royal playbook for manifesto ideas? Under his plans for compulsory national service, teenagers would either take on full-time military placements or volunteer in the community for one weekend a month. Volunteering was at the heart of last year’s coronation, with the Big Help Out initiative.

But Rishi Sunak’s idea mostly reminded me of the moment in 2015 when I was sitting with Prince Harry in Auckland after a successful tour of Australia and New Zealand. It was towards the end of his decade in the military and he said: “Bring back national service.”

Harry, then 30, credited his time in the army with keeping him from going off the rails and helping him to avoid making bad choices. “I dread to think where I’d be without the army,” he said. “You can make bad choices in life, some severe, but it’s how you recover from those and which path you end up taking. And the army has done amazing things for me. It’s done me no harm, just good. More importantly, I’ve seen what the army can do for other young guys. Bring back national service.”

While Harry has undoubtedly found the fulfilment he craved through family life with the Duchess of Sussex and their children, some would say that he has made a few questionable choices since he stopped wearing the uniform.

The military helped transform his image from that of a playboy prince to a campaigner for veterans’ causes, albeit with an occasional blip. After his 2012 Las Vegas strip-billiard antics, Harry admitted it was a “classic example of me probably being too much army and not enough prince”.

Diana, Princess of Wales did much to try and show Princes William and Harry a “life outside palace walls”. Trips with her to McDonald’s and homeless shelters gave them a rare glimpse of life away from royal flummery. But it was the military that gave the princes — educated at Ludgrove, Eton and Sandhurst — the experience of rubbing alongside people from different walks of life.

Sunak has spoken of his hopes that national service “will foster a culture of service across society and make society more cohesive”. Might it also be a rare opportunity to encourage more young people to experience life outside their social comfort zones?

In 2016, a year after Harry left the army, I sat down with him again. The prince, who qualified as an Apache co-pilot gunner and served two tours in Afghanistan, confessed that he was pining for military life. “I miss the army,” he said. “It teaches you courage, discipline, respect for others, the value of friendships, respect for the monarchy.” Hmm. Harry’s detractors would argue that some of his recent outpourings have shown a notable lack of respect for the monarchy. But I digress. Courage, discipline, respect for others, the value of friendships? Qualities worth signing up for. But voluntarily, not because the government says so.

[From The Times]

This has everything: clout-chasing Prince Harry and trying to attach Harry to the Tories’ mandatory national service scheme; insulting Harry for marrying Meghan and moving out of the UK; making a 2016 interview with a prince sound like he was trying to enact social policy in the present day; and finally, some shade for Sunak’s plan to mandate national service. I understand why “national service” has become such a conversation in the British media, but this is definitely a new low and a rather desperate attempt to bring Harry into the election-politics coverage.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.